Born August 15th, 1969.

Played with: New Orleans Bingo! Show, Liquidrone

Clint has made the Crescent City his home for more than sixteen years now, after living in twelve different states before he was ten years old. His family has deep local ties, with ancestors living in the Third Ward as far back as the late nineteenth century. In fact, as a child, Clint absorbed the spirit and feel of traditional jazz before he even knew what it was, from the records that his grandmother would play. At Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he studied with clarinet innovator Alvin Baptiste and then moved back to New Orleans. There, he paid the rent on a bicycle, delivering food for a local diner to customers throughout the French Quarter. He built his reputation at night, though, through Bingo! and Liquidrone, two projects whose experimental performances continue to draw from sources that are wildly eclectic yet at the same time indigenous to New Orleans.

"Ben Jaffe saw the New Orleans Bingo Show one night and afterwards he said to me that it had made him feel, for the first time in a long time, like he was having a modern New Orleans experience. We had dancers and comedic stuff as well as music, and maybe that reminded him of the old New Orleans variety shows that his dad used to tell him about. Even so, I couldn't believe it when he asked me to come and sing at Preservation Hall. I wear a lot of musical hats, but this is one I never dreamed I'd get to try on."

Though still active with both his Bingo and Liquidrone projects, Clint treasures his association with Preservation Hall. Like every artist to come from these streets and neighborhoods, he finds all of his work, no matter how experimental or postmodern it becomes, benefits from being rooted to the foundations laid by those who drew previously from what New Orleans has to offer.

"You know, Preservation Hall has been through changes of its own. Willie and Percy Humphrey, Billie and DeDe Pierce, George Lewis: Each changed the music in one way or another. And some people resisted those changes. Maybe it's not as radical as having a rock & roll singer come in, but on the other hand being here has changed me too. I've started to dig more into the background of this music. I've come to love the gentlemen in this band; each one is my teacher. After all, for the seven years I spent delivering food on my bike, I went through those same streets in the French Quarter and experiencing those same sights and smells. At the end of the day, we're all united by the same thing: our deep love for New Orleans."

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